Shatter
by Fayth3
Summary: Sometimes you need to let go. Rose takes matters into her own hands.


She doesn't know what she wants but knows that somehow she'll find it in the library in the TARDIS.

It's the longest that she has ever spent in a library, probably the longest she's ever spent reading, if you don't count the odd summer when she discovered Jane Austen and read Pride and Prejudice until she could quote it by heart.

_That's okay, culture shock. It happens to the best of us._

But the TARDIS library is the biggest that she has ever seen and bigger than she ever imagined—actually it looks like the library from the Beauty and the Beast now that she thinks about it.

Not that she does much thinking these days, finding it easy to deal with the new Doctor if she shuts off her brain and just goes with the easy smile and the pin-striped suit.

It has been two months since the games station and she knows that there is something that she needs—

_Your wish is my command._

Something that she has to do before she can settle, but she doesn't know what it is and it's killing her.

_My head … it's killing me_

Except that this time there is no Doctor to take it all away, at least not the right Doctor.

_Just the Doctor._

Books are starting to be piled around her as she continues her frantic search for nothing and her eyes sting as the words start to swim in front of her. The last volume in her hand she throws away in a fit of pique at its uselessness and only feels slightly guilty as the book lies on the carpet, its valuable pages creased.

Why can't she find what she wants?

Is it because she's not an alien? Is the TARDIS not helping because she wasn't fast enough to save the Doctor?

Is it part and parcel of being a stupid Ape? A pathetic human with only five senses and the total inability to function on less than three hours sleep in five days..

_All you do is eat chips, go to bed, and watch telly! _

Rose grabs at her blonde hair and growls, flinging her hands out in pure frustration.

Her hand touches a book that wasn't there before and she feels a slight chastising inside her head from the TARDIS at not simply _asking_ sooner.

_Your machine gets inside my head._

Rose slides her hands over the leather bound book and the pages flip open.

Yes. That's what she needs.

That's exactly what she needs.

The Doctor gives her a long look when she tells him where she wants to go next but doesn't say anything as he programs the data and coordinates into the TARDIS mainframe.

Less time than it takes to make a cup of tea and they are there.

_Did I mention it also travels in time?_

The Doctor reaches over to take her hand and she shakes her head.

This is something that she needs to do for herself, please, can he wait here?

She'll be fine, she promises.

His face is set with fright at what could happen to her, what has already happened to her, but, like before, there is nothing that he can deny Rose Tyler and so he, reluctantly, agrees.

But he isn't a fool and tells her that she has until dawn and then he'll come looking for her.

_Rose? I'm coming to get you._

For the first time Rose smiles at him; really smiles and it takes him so aback that she almost laughs.

He looks so adorably confused that she plants a kiss on his cheek and he pulls her in for a hug, somehow reassured.

He opens the door and reminds her of that he'll be waiting for her.

_Promise you won't disappear?_

The hundred foot wall of ice is exactly how she remembers it, with the crystal blue water looking like a sculpture.

She lets her fingers trail over the shiny surface ignoring the biting chill in her fingertips as they threaten to stick to the frozen plane.

She stands in front of the cresting wave closing her eyes and imagines the waves crashing down onto her, washing her and her pain away in a torrent, a typhoon, a tidal wave, a tsunami.

She imagines the water's face cracking suddenly, a millennium of ice age undone in a split second, splintering like spider cracks in glass, the force of a million tonnes of water rushing down the beach, frothy white waves like stallions riding towards her., reaching with invisible hands to drag her into the watery depths.

She imagines the water so incredibly cold that it stings like a thousand knives; imagines those knives slicing into her until the crystal water runs red with her blood.

That makes her stumble back, her eyes flashing open at the macabre thought.

_Bundle of laughs you are._

She wraps her arms around herself and steps back, releasing some of the tension and carries on towards her destination.

It's quite a climb but she knows that it will be worth it when she gets there. The cliff overlooking the frozen waves has to be at least a hundred feet high, overlooking the frozen sea and each step is a struggle to get there.

She wonders if this is really a good idea.

_You don't have to do anything you don't want to, but this is the last time we can be here. _

Her hands scrabble for purchase on the cold rocks and her fingernails crack as they scratch away in the frozen ground, trying to get a hand hold.

She is out of breath and her legs ache when she finally reaches the summit and she pauses for just a moment looking out at the scenery.

There's an icy wind blowing her hair across her face. The blonde strands lashing her wind-chapped face like tiny whips.

Rose closes her eyes again briefly, dwelling on the pain, feeling the loss and grief coming from deep inside her—a hole, an absence of light, of life, of love. Of him..

_I wasn't really gonna leave you on your own. _

She imagines the hole inside her getting bigger and bigger and bigger, swallowing her, engulfing her—

_Rose, you've got to stop this now,_

_--_and forcing its way though her stomach, through her heart, up her chest, towards her throat.

_You're gonna burn!_

Rose opens her eyes, clenches her fists and opens her mouth.

_Just let go_

She screams.

Woman Wept hasn't had a single living soul on her since two space travellers stopped by a hundred years ago.

Now one of those travellers has come back and brought the splintered shards of her heart together with the frozen remnants of her soul and she offers them to the ice-covered planet, screams them into the frigid, dead air like a broken prayer to a lost god.

She screams, shattering the silence and maybe even the ice caps with her anguish.

_We're falling through space, you and me. _

She screams and screams until her voice spills from her lips like drops of blood and her ragged throat is scraped raw from pain and emotion.

_Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go... _

The shrill sound recoils off the ice walls, growing louder and louder with each reverberation, echoing, until the whole planet screams with her.

She has felt so isolated in her grief, but as the very air cries with her she isn't so alone.

_But you never take time to imagine the impossible. Maybe you survive. _

Tears she didn't realize she had needed to cry freeze to her cheeks and look like crystal drops, icicles hanging from her chin and she brushes them away impatiently as she allows herself to fall to her knees, hearing the echo of her pain all around the dead planet; the crystal drops laying at her knees.

She bows her head and surrenders to it.

_Welcome to the end of the world._

Two miles below, a man stands outside a blue box and mirrors her movements, tucking his thin hands into a brown coat and sniffing away two tears, sharing in her pain but unable to tell her so., unable to let her know that he didn't stay inside, unable to leave her to grieve by herself

She is back by dawn with a smile and a bounce in her step and the box vanishes, leaving an empty beach echoing with a low hum of pain.

Rose Tyler takes away a new outlook on life, a new lightness and a new Doctor who she will learn to love.

She leaves pain and grief and sorrow and regret.

Her grief leaves its mark on the forgotten planet, an everlasting testament to the capacity of hurt the human body can handle before it breaks;

_I think you need a Doctor. _

–footsteps on the icy sands and two small crystal teardrops on the cliff where a woman wept.


End file.
